LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
<&A,./.. LD460 8 

PRESENTED BY 



UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



PROFESSOR HART'S 



^LTJM:iSri ADDRESS. 



"J: 6m. <^' ^ .< 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 



OF TUE 



COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY, 



June 23, 1863, 

/ 

BY JOHN S. HART, LL.D. 






PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE ALUMXI ASSOCIATION 
AND OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES. 



/ 

PHILADELPHIA: 
PEIISTTED EY C. SHEEMAN, SON & CO. 

18 63. 



v3^ 



(pO 



t 



ADDRESS. 



It was my lot a few years since, in the course of a 
summer excursion among the mountains, to cross a 
stream so near to its fountain-head, that the passage 
required no greater effort than simply to step from 
one bank to the other. The infant river was as yet 
but a brook. It so chanced that the stream and the 
traveller were journeying in the same direction, and 
not the least among the pleasures of the journey was 
the opportunity which it afforded to watch from day 
to day the gradual transformation of my fellow- 
traveller ; and when at length I had reached the 
broad savannas through which the majestic stream, 
now floating the commerce of many lands upon its 
surface, found its way into the sea, it was difficult to 
realize that the mighty river and the diminutive 
rivulet were one and the Same. 

The alumnus of Princeton feels a pleasure some- 
what akin to the one described, when he traces the 
progress of this noble institution from its first feeble 
beginnings to its present enlarged and influential 



condition. The majestic stream which we admire 
to-day, may not perhaps have sprung from a source 
so small as that to which I have likened it ; but 
surely never mountain streamlet symbolized a purer 
origin, — never was stream freighted through all its 
course with richer or more varied blessings. God 
speed it through many a long league, as it rolls on 
in ever-increasing volume towards the ocean! 

When Princeton College was founded. New Jersey 
was still a colony. Her population fell short of 
60,000 souls. Her territory still bore the trails of 
the savage, much of it being yet a wilderness, with 
only clustering marks of civilization here and there. 
Her people were few, their wants were many, and 
the avenues to education nearly impassable. Almost 
the only instruction which reached them came from 
the pulpit. In the whole wide space, from Con- 
necticut to Virginia, there was not a single seminary 
in which a course of liberal education could be pur- 
sued, or by which its honors could be conferred. 
Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale, far apart and 
feeble as they then were, were the only monuments 
which the love of science had yet built in the New 
World. At such a time, in despite of poverty, 
sparseness of population, fewness of competent in- 
structors, provincial feebleness and depression, and 
the habitual jealousy of the Crown, a few faithful 
ministers of the Gospel, moved by a spirit of the 



purest benevolence, and gifted with no common 
prescience of the far-reaching import of what they 
were doing, — and guided, I doubt not, by the Holy 
Spirit himself, — laid the foundations of the College 
of New Jersey. Such, fellow Alumni, was the origin 
of our College. It w^as founded in faith and prayer, 
for the glory of God and the spread of the Gospel. 
How truly it has fulfilled the wise and beneficent 
purposes of its founders, its whole history declares. 
Some few particulars of this history it may be worth 
while cursorily to notice. 

In the first place, this College, under every admin- 
istration of its affairs, has been known as an institu- 
tion in which God was recognized and honored as 
supreme, and his word received, without abatement 
or reserve^ as the only infallible standard of faith 
and duty. There has been no President of the 
College, through all that illustrious file of names, 
who has not made the spiritual and religious welfare 
of the institution a leading, primary, controlling aim 
and purpose. There has been no time in the history 
of the College, w^hen the Gospel, as proclaimed from 
the College pulpit, gave an uncertain sound. It has 
been my privilege, in the course of a somewhat 
checkered life, to listen to a great variety of pulpit 
and pastoral ministrations, in seminaries of learning 
and theology, in city, village, and country, and no- 
where have I heard the Gospel preached with 



greater plainness, directness, and power, nowhere 
have I heard the truth of God brought home with 
more affectionate and loving earnestness to the con- 
science, than in the pulpit of this College. I appeal 
with confidence to every alumnus within the sound 
of my voice, to bear witness that my experience in 
this respect is not peculiar. The Christianity which 
has been cultivated here, has not been a dry and 
barren orthodoxy, but a religion of life and power, 
and it has brought forth precious fruit in the con- 
version of many scores of educated young men, and 
in the maintenance of a high standard of spirituality 
among those students who professed the name of 
Christ. The College has shared, I believe, in every 
general revival of religion with which the land has 
been blessed, and many times, when all around was 
dry and waste, this favored fleece has been moist 
with the dews of heaven. 

In the second place, this College has done good 
service to the church of Christ, in the number and 
character of the men it has given to the sacred 
ministry. The primary object indeed of those who 
founded the College, was to furnish the means 
whereby the church might obtain a supply of 
learned and godly ministers. Theological semi- 
naries, at that time, and for a long time thereafter, 
were unknown. The training required for entrance 
to the pulpit was a course of liberal study at Col- 



lege, supplemented by theological reading, under 
the direction of the President, or under private 
pastors. In those early days, therefore, the College 
had a larger share even than it now has in the work 
of preparing young men for the ministry. To do 
well the work for which it was most needed, its 
founders felt the importance of its being baptized 
from the first with the very spirit of Christ, and the 
impress thus given to its early infancy has not been 
lost in the vigor of its manhood. The College has, 
of course, fed other professions. But among its 
manifold other beneficent and honorable achieve- 
ments, it has never lost or demitted its high func- 
tion of aiding the church in supplying her pulpits 
with sound and godly pastors. Yonder Seminary 
itself, though in a different way, is not more cer- 
tainly a helper of the church in this vital matter 
than is the College of New Jersey. That a health- 
ful influence of this kind has been always going on 
within these walls, is patent to every observer of the 
College history. If it needs any confirmation, you 
have it in the significant fact, that of its graduates, 
the number who have entered the sacred ministry is 
nearly double of those who have entered any other 
profession. The whole number, for example, who 
are reported on the last triennial catalogue as having 
received the degree of Doctor of Medicine is 363, 



8 

while the whole number of those who have become 
ministers is 704. 

Who can estimate the service done to the church 
of Christ, and to the general advancement of society, 
in all that is elevating, refining, purifying, liberal- 
izing and good, by those more than 700 sons of 
Nassau Hall, who have exercised the pastoral office] 
How many among them have been burning and 
shining lights '? How many of them have been men 
of mark in the higher walks of theological and meta- 
physical speculation] How many have instructed 
their generation by the press, as editors and authors ] 
How many as teachers, Professors, and Presidents of 
other seminaries 1 What a man of power was Dr. 
John Breckinridge ] AVhat a brilliant light was Al- 
bert B. Dod] What a lustre has been shed upon 
evangelical Christianity by Bishops Mcllvaine and 
Johns'? What wide-spread beneficent results have 
sprung from the labors of merely those four ministers 
of the Gospel, James W. Alexander, Zebulon Butler, 
John Dorrance, and Edward N. Kirk, once youths 
together here ] How many other like golden clus- 
ters could be pointed out by one conversant with 
the entire history of the institution] A College 
which has given to the world one such man as 
Charles Hodge or Addison Alexander, has, in that 
fact alone, an imperishable claim upon the gratitude 
of the church of Christ. 



But the benign results of this institution have not 
been limited to the church, or to one profession. 
Other liberal professions also have been enriched and 
adorned by Princeton alumni. The sons of Nassau 
Hall have been especially eminent as civilians. 
What a noble group of worthies graces its pre- 
Revolutionary rolH What did not the country 
owe, in that day of weakness and fear, to those 
giant men, pure-minded as they were strong, Benja- 
min E-ush, E-ichard Stockton, William Paterson, 
Oliver Ellsworth, Luther Martin, Morgan Lewis, 
Brockholdst Livingston, and James Madison] Not 
one generation back, in the time of my own novi- 
tiate here, the singular spectacle was presented in 
the Senate of the United States, then in its palmiest 
days, of more than one sixth of its entire number of 
members being alumni of the College of New Jer- 
sey, the Senator from New Jersey, who from his own 
seat with honest pride took note of the fact, being 
himself one of the noblest of them all.* Up to 
that same time, too, it w^as noted, our alumni had 
formed one third part of those who had been the 
chief law officers of the General Government, and 
the advocates of its constitutional rights before the 
Supreme Court of the United States, as they had 
been one fifth part of all the members of that 

^ Samuel L. Soutliard. 



10 

august tribunal. One alumnus and one President of 
the College were signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. One alumnus of the College has been 
President, and two of its alumni have been Vice- 
Presidents of the United States ; forty-seven of its 
alumni have been Senators of the United States ; 
seventeen have been Foreign Ambassadors; eight 
have been Judges of the Supreme Court of the 
United States ; twenty-six have been Governors of 
States ; thirty have been Presidents of Colleges ; 
eighty-eight have been Professors in Colleges, Theo- 
logical Seminaries, Medical Schools, or Law Schools. 
Is this a record of which we need to be ashamed ] 
The graduates of Princeton have achieved honorable 
triumphs in every branch of learning, human and 
divine. They have been ornaments of the legal 
and medical professions, eloquent and manly defen- 
ders of human rights, persuasive advocates of the 
cross. They are at this moment in large numbers 
fighting the battles of their country. In scholar- 
ship, in practical talent, in devotion to the public 
interests, they have found competitors and rivals, 
but nowhere superiors or masters. What college 
roll would not be graced by a name like that of 
Stockton, which in three successive generations, 
father, son, and grandson, has done its country hon- 
ored service, equally in civil, diplomatic, senatorial, 
and military life, at home and abroad, in peace and 



11 

war, by land and sea. Where, in the history of this 
country, shall we find an example of a more brilliant 
philologist than Addison Alexander] Where an 
abler ecclesiast than Bishop Hobart] Where a 
man of higher medical repute than Dr. Hosack '? 
Where a financier of more eagle-like genius than 
Nicholas Biddle '? By whom have the halls of Con- 
gress been more profoundly stirred than by John 
McPherson Berrien of Georgia, James McDowell of 
Virginia, Theodore Frelinghuysen and Samuel L. 
Southard of New Jersey ] What a wealth of wis- 
dom and of far-reaching sagacity had our late Presi- 
dent, James Carnahan ] What a magnate in assem- 
blies was Ashbel Green ] What a prince among 
men was Samuel Stanhope Smith 1 

Results like those which I have been enumerating, 
are not without a cause. If Princeton has become 
a familiar name in the land, if through her alumni 
she has achieved so much, in so many departments 
of excellence, and that through the whole course of 
her history, and never probably on a larger scale than 
at this moment, it has not been through some mere 
lucky accident. The foundations of her greatness 
have been laid on the rock, and the structure which 
has been raised thereupon, is as firm as its propor- 
tions are beautiful and stately. Let us look for a 
moment at one or two of the prominent features 



12 

which have marked her character, and which conse- 
quently have chiefly influenced her career. 

In the first place, as it has been already declared, 
this College has been preeminently a place where God 
has been honored. I mean not that semi-infidel recog- 
nition of his presence and authority, which is given 
in our legislative and political bodies, nor that forced 
and reluctant concession to the Christian sentiment 
of the community, the formal reading of the Scrip- 
tures in our public schools, but a substantial, practical, 
hearty embracing of religion as the great paramount 
concern of life. Of course you will not understand 
me to mean that all College students, here or any- 
where, so embrace Christianity. But this I say, no 
graduate ever left this College, whatever may have 
been his own personal character, without full proof, 
that in the opinion of the President and Professors, 
Christianity was infinitely the most momentous of 
human interests, and attention to personal religion 
the earliest and most urgent of human duties. If you 
will excuse my referring once more to my own recol- 
lections, I will say, that in no three years of my life 
have these great truths been brought to bear upon 
my own personal convictions with greater urgency, 
or on a greater variety of points, than during the 
three years which I spent within these walls. Now, 
in this matter, my creed is very simple and direct. 
Those that honor God, he will honor. I believe 



13 

that he has put special honor on this our beloved 
Mother, and that much of the success which has at- 
tended her sons, has been the legitimate fruit of those 
high Christian principles of thought and action, with 
which they have here been imbued. 

Another feature which has marked this College, 
so far as I can learn, through every period of her 
history, has been the aim to keep her standard of 
scholarship up to the highest mark which the times 
would admit. Sound scholarship and earnest piety, — 
these have been the Jachin and Boaz of our beauti- 
ful temple. To secure this sound and thorough 
scholarship, the Trustees have not only from time to 
time prescribed a liberal course of study, but they 
have exercised special care in their selection of 
Presidents and Professors, and in this matter they 
have been singularly successful. There is not 
probably a literary institution to be found, in whose 
history igi this respect so few mistakes have been 
made. Look through the long line of its Presi- 
dents. In not one instance has the appointment 
been even an approach to failure. The same I be- 
lieve has been substantially true of every one of its 
leading Professors. Is there not something re- 
markable in this 1 How continually, in the history 
of such institutions, are men found wanting in some 
essential qualification, and obliged, after inflicting 
lasting mischief, to retire from the posts to which 



14 

they had been unwisely called ] How is it that the 
Trustees of Princeton have made no such disastrous 
mistakes 1 How is it that they have so uniformly 
selected men who have justified the choice 1 — men 
who have been able administrators and skilful 
teachers, as well as ripe scholars and thinkers '? 
May we not recognize in these remarkable facts 
another proof of the providential care of our 
Heavenly Father] Is it not a part of that honor 
which he has put upon an institution that has ever 
delighted to honor him'? 

Whatever be the cause, the fact is beyond dispute. 
The Faculty of Princeton has always been one of 
recognized ability, and the scholarship of its alumni 
such as can be secured only by able and scholarly 
Professors. For, whatever be the curriculum of 
studies enjoined by statute, it is the living Professor 
only that gives it real substance and power. It is 
not in College statutes to make scholars. It is by 
the daily contact with men of mark and power that 
College students receive the intellectual impulse 
which leads to true scholarship. No one can have 
been much conversant with the alumni of Princeton, 
without feeling that tliey had taken tone and color 
from the atmosphere which they had breathed here. 
The proprieties of the occasion forbid my enforcing 
this argument by some of its strongest instances. 
I may not, with decorum, speak of the present 



15 

Professors, however able and distinguished. But 
would that man be likely to be a sciolist, who had 
learned to observe from Henry, to think from Dod, 
who had studied letters with Hope, or James Alex- 
ander, or chemistry with Torrey, or languages with 
Moffat ? 

A seat of learning which has been once fairly estab- 
lished and become a recognized centre for certain 
intellectual and moral ideas, and which has remained 
uniformly loyal and staunch to the principles of its 
foundation, is a mighty power in the state. There is 
no such effectual breakwater against popular delu- 
sions and captivating heresies of all kinds, scientific, 
political, educational, or religious, as a sober, staid, 
hale old University or College. This conservative 
power of a seat of learning increases with its years. 
The longer it remains, the more natural and easy it 
becomes for the popular mind to accept its counsels. 
Xo other institution newly founded, supposing it to 
have all other means and appliances in equal mea- 
sure with this, supposing it to have a Faculty in all 
respects of equal ability, nay, supposing it to have 
these very same men as President and Professors, 
could wield half the influence upon the community 
that Princeton now does. The golden memories of 
the past, the time-honored associations and tradi- 
tions of successive generations of students, the very 
graves of the dead, have here a voice. They form 



16 

an august, an ever-increasing cloud of witnesses. It 
is no mere flight of fancy to imagine, standing be- 
hind the occupant of each chair in this institution, 
the long file of savans and philosophers who have 
occupied it before him. There is a substantial and 
sober sense in which each present Professor wields 
the power and influence of all his predecessors. 
The same man can do more in a given chair here, 
than he could do in a like department in a new and 
untried institution. A seat of learning becomes thus 
a depository, in which the power of past generations 
is accumulated upon the present. The dead, no less 
than the living, speak here. We have all heard that 
voice, we have all felt its power. I appeal to every 
alumnus present to say whether, when first he en- 
tered this institution as a student, there was not 
something in its venerable aspect and its honored 
memories, that stirred him to high and noble 
thoughts 1 Do we not feel its power now, stirring 
us as no other human allegiance can, linking us with 
a brotherhood higher than all political, higher than 
all mere literary and scientific association, a brother- 
hood higher and purer than any known among men, 
— that only excepted, which makes all Christian men 
brothers, by virtue of the common brotherhood of 
the Lord Jesus Christ '? A seat of learning is some- 
thing more than its present Faculty, and the cabinets, 
libraries, apparatus, and other material means and 



17 

appliances for the imparting of knowledge. It is 
the entire body of all its Professors and alumni, liv- 
ing and dead, from the first day of its foundation 
until now. Its aggregate influence, not only as an 
educational institution, but as a great conservative 
power in the community, includes all these elements. 
That influence and power, moreover, be it remem- 
bered, is an ever-increasing one. It is, too, a growth, 
not a creation. No institution founded now, however 
richly endowed, however able its Faculty, whatever 
the auspices under which it might be ushered into 
being, could possibly accomplish what this College is 
accomplishing. God only speaks, and it is done. 
Man's works require time. The nobler the work, the 
greater, usually, the time required for its maturity. 
Man may plant the acorn ; he must wait for the 
oak. He cannot create the full-grown tree. All his 
science, all his wit, all his ingenuity are here at 
fault. So of institutions of learning. They do not, 
and they cannot, exert their full power and influence, 
imtil they have become venerable for years. No act 
of legislation, no outpouring of princely benefac- 
tions, could create at once, or in one generation, a 
Princeton, a Harvard, or a Yale. 

A College is not a professional school, nor can it 
wisely be accepted as a substitute for such a school. 
Yet it may be safely said that a man's success in 
any liberal profession depends far more upon the 

2 



18 

thoroughness of his College course, than upon the 
thoroughness of his course in the subsequent pro- 
fessional school. If his studies in College be shallow 
and superficial, shallowness and superficiality will 
be apt to attend him in all his subsequent career. 
If his foundation be insecure, insecurity will mark 
his superstructure. If, on the other hand, his Col- 
lege course be of the right kind, professional success 
seems to be only a question of time, and of faithful 
and upright endeavor. 

Nor is this without a cause. Look for a moment 
at some of the leading College studies, and see how 
well they are adapted to secure just such a result. 
Take, for example, the study of the ancient lan- 
guages. Suppose that in College a man masters the 
niceties of expression of these two most exact and 
finished languages of the world. What a power it 
gives him whenever, in any profession, he under- 
takes to follow the thread of any subtle and recon- 
dite argument 1 What an insight it gives him into 
the mysterious workings of the human mind, and 
into the delicate, almost shadowy, yet very quintes- 
sential niceties in the conditions of thought and 
emotion'? For, be it remembered, we think in 
words, and never do we so really analyze thought, 
never do we come so near to a direct scrutiny of the 
very essence of the soul itself, in its most hidden and 
elusive workings, as when we apply the dissecting 



19 

knife to words. Moreover, what a wealth of expres- 
sion this commerce with languages produces ] In the 
languages which have been chosen by common con- 
sent as those best adapted to the purposes of intel- 
lectual culture, there is too this additional advan- 
tage, that they contain a large share of the words 
which compose our own tongue ; and so those who 
study the Latin and Greek, acquire thereby a more 
thorough mastery of their own English than is possi- 
ble in any other way. 

This argument is especially applicable to the 
acquisition of scientific and professional terms, which 
are derived almost entirely from the classical tongues. 
"What a pitiable confusion of ideas must the student 
of medicine be in, who knows nothing of Greek 1 
What a chaos to him must be the whole literature 
of his profession 1 No amount of professional study 
can ever remove the mist which hangs like a veil 
over every part of his professional knowledge. He 
can never have that clear, sunlight perception of the 
meaning of his own chosen authors, which is had by 
one familiar with the Greek. Look through a 
medical dictionary. Four-fifths of its terms are 
pure Greek. So with nearly all the literature of his 
profession. Not a page of it but is studded thick 
with Greek, — disguised a little, perhaps, by being 
written in English characters, but unmixed, unmis- 
takable Greek for all that. Not a vein or artery, 



20 

not a muscle or tendon, not a nerve, or an organ, or 
a function, not a disease, not a drug with which he 
nauseates, or an instrument with which he tortures, 
but throws him back upon the language of Galen 
and Hippocrates. 

And how is it with the student of law ] As the 
science of medicine is Hellenic, so that of law is 
Roman in its origin. Roman law being the basis of 
modern law, the science has grown up with an 
accumulation of terms and maxims drawn from 
the language of the Twelve Tables and the Pandects ; 
and though this law Latin may be corrupt and in- 
elegant, whoever would walk amidst it, an acknow- 
ledged master in his profession, must first have made 
himself accomplished in the T^atin tongue. The 
young man who at College has become familiar with 
the Latin authors, has acquired thereby an advan- 
tage which will follow him in every upward step of 
the legal profession, and which will become all the 
more marked, the higher he rises in it. 

Need I speak of theology'? The ambassador of 
Jesus Christ, who knows not the language in which 
his own commission is written, is doomed for life to 
a state of most humiliating bondage. I do not say 
that he may not be a good man, or that he may not 
do a good work, without being a Greek scholar. But 
as one set for the defence of the truth, he must ever 
hold a subordinate and inferior rank. If a know- 



21 



ledge of the Greek is indispensable to the theologian, 
equally so is a knowledge of the Latin. Nearly all 
our logical and. theological terras are Latin, and a rich 
mine of most valuable orthodox divinitv has in the 
providence of God been committed to the keeping of 
that tongue. The minister of the Gospel, who would 
not be a mere parrot, to repeat and to reproduce, in at- 
tenuated doses, to country congregations, what he 
learns from his Professors at the Seminary, who seeks 
to be able, according to the command of his Master, to 
bring forth things new and old, who would not have 
himself put to shame, and the cause he advocates 
brought to harm, by pretentious contradictions 
which he has not the scholarship to expose, must be 
thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Latin 
tongues. 

What is true of the Latin and Greek, is true of 
every other College study, though perhaps not true 
of all in an equal degree. In what profession is not 
a man more robust to grapple with difficulty, more 
subtle to detect false reasoning, more capable for 
following out connected trains of thought, more apt 
for discovery, or more fertile in invention, in conse- 
quence of having been subjected at College to a 
severe and wholesome course of mathematical analy- 
sis '? Why need I speak of intellectual philosophy'? 
Is it not plain that he who indoctrinates the young 
in the laws of mind, determines almost to a certainty 



22 

the school of theology to which they will belong '? 
Besides this, the laws of mental action, and the 
various questions relating to moral responsibility, 
interterminate at innumerable points that whole 
undefined region of medical and legal jurisprudence 
connected with the treatment of crime and insanity. 
A sound theory of morals affects almost every prac- 
tical question that can arise in any one of the pro- 
fessions. More even than this, an intelligent and 
vigorous study of mental phenomena gives to the 
mind itself a vast accession of power. It makes a 
man more active and robust in all his intellectual 
operations. It gives him a keener insight into 
things. It increases the vigor of his grasp of almost 
every subject which he approaches. 

But I may not dwell upon this point. Suffice it 
to say once more, in general terms, the studies of a 
College course are selected mainly for the purpose of 
laying the groundwork for the liberal professions, 
and it is vastly more important to the elevation of 
these professions, and to the success of an individual 
in any of them, that the College course be liberal 
and thorough, than that the course in the profes- 
sional school should be so. Deficiencies in the latter 
are often remedied by subsequent study. Defici- 
encies in the former, never. I would not have 
our Theological Seminaries, our Law and Medical 
Schools, curtailed of their fair proportions. Eather 



23 

let them be enlarged and strengthened. But it is 
impossible to raise the standard of your professional 
schools, except by raising the standard of your Col- 
leges. What can learned exegesis do for a man who 
is unacquainted with the very first principles of in- 
terpretation 1 — who is hardly acquainted even with 
the grammatical forms of the language which he is 
called upon to expound'? If Princeton Seminary 
has achieved great and glorious results for the 
church and the world, one reason why she has been 
able to do so is, that Princeton College and its com- 
peers have furnished her with materials duly pre- 
pared for the work. It will be a sad day for every 
professional school, and for every profession, when 
in the general scramble for patronage. Colleges shall 
be obliged, or permitted, to lower the standard of 
academic culture. All good men, who value the in- 
stitutions of society and the professions by which 
mainly they are guarded, all who desire to maintain 
and increase the conservative influences that still 
exist among us, should bestow a fostering hand upon 
our Colleges. If there is any one duty at this time 
especially incumbent on the friends of Princeton 
Seminary, it is to foster Princeton College. 

There are a few American Colleges which, by the 
good fortune of their birth, and by the fostering 
care which was early bestowed upon them, have 
attained an acknowledged rank of pre-eminence. It 



24 

is no disparagement of other institutions, to say that 
they are not in the position of these. Many of them 
are sturdy and vigorous growths, full of sap, and of 
a healthy young life. But time only can make 
them wide-spreading oaks. On these older institu- 
tions, as representing the acknowledged front rank 
of American Colleges, there rests a peculiar duty. 
No Colleges, so well as they, can resist unwise in- 
novations in learning. None, so w^ell as they, can 
bring forward real improvements. None can do so 
much as they to raise the standard of academic 
learning and culture, and to secure that thorough, 
exact, and elegant scholarship, the general attain- 
ment of which would double at once the value of 
every theological, medical, and law school in the 
land. Other and younger Colleges naturally follow, 
and are glad to follow, the example of their seniors 
in advancing the standard of academic requirement. 
But on the older members of the brotherhood the 
main brunt of the work must fall; and to enable 
them to accomplish this, one thing is absolutely 
essential. They must he Uherally endoioed. 

The friends of Cambridge early saw the necessity 
of this, and directed the attention of the benevolent 
to it, so that it is now, and for a long time has been, 
amply provided for. It is supposed to have at this 
time productive property to the value of more than 
a million of dollars. In respect to Yale, it is only 



25 

within the present generation that her friends began 
to see the importance of securing her position by 
procuring an endowment. About thirty years ago, 
a special agent was appointed for this purpose, who 
in the course of two years succeeded in raising 
among her friends and alumni the sum of one hun- 
dred thousand dollars, constituting her Centum- 
^lille Fund. The thoughts of the benevolent having 
been once turned in that direction by the very efforts 
necessary for the creation of this fund, gifts and 
legacies have been pouring in upon her ever since 
in almost a continual stream. Legacies tend almost 
with the certainty of gravitation to that which is 
well established. People, the world over, like to 
give to the strong. A man in dying is naturally re- 
luctant to leave his money to an institution where 
there is the possibility of its being swamped. So 
the consequence of making Yale secure, has been to 
make her rich. Thirty years ago, she w^as compara- 
tively penniless. Now, she is reported to have, be- 
sides her grounds, buildings, libraries, and cabinets, 
property to the amount of $425,000, of which 
$350,000 is productive, and not less than §250,000 
is appropriated to the support of the Professors. 

And how is it with Princeton, historically the 
fourth on the list of American Colleges 1 AVhat are 
her means for sustaining a competition with her two 
illustrious seniors '? What are her endowments 1 



26 

She has her grounds and buildmgs, her libraries and 
cabinets, and some small sums in the shape of 
scholarships for the support of indigent students, 
yielding annually, in tuition fees, about $2000. 
She has also endowments appropriated directly to sus- 
tentation purposes, yielding annually about $2000 
more. This is the whole story. All her resources, 
direct and indirect, for keeping the institution agoing, 
apart from tuition fees and room rent, amount to 
$4000 a year, all told. On the other hand, since 
the breaking out of the war, her revenues, partly 
from the loss of students, chiefly those from the 
Southern States, and partly from diminished pro- 
ductiveness of investments, have fallen off fully 
$8000 a year, and the Professors are consequently 
in the humiliating position of having to be sus- 
tained by special contributions. The simple, naked, 
mortifying fact is, notwithstanding stringent re- 
trenchments, the income of the College has to be 
supplemented to the amount of $5000 a year by 
private subscriptions, and these subscriptions the 
Professors themselves have to solicit. Does it re- 
quire any sagacity to see in what this must end ] 

Fellow Alumni, shall these things be '? Shall 
Princeton fall back into the rank of a third or 
fourth rate College '? Shall all her garnered wealth 
of honorable fame, all the power of her prestige, and 
of her venerable traditions, be lost to society, and 



27 

lost to the church ] Have not Presbyterians, who 
owe so much to Prmceton, been especially delinquent 
in this behalf? What has New Jersey ever clone 
for the institution which bears her name, and which 
has done more towards the advancement of her sons, 
and more to give rank and character to the State 
itself, than any other one cause, — I had almost said, 
more than all other causes combined'? What has 
New Jersey done for the College of New Jersey'? 
What has this broad belt of Middle States, lying 
south of New England, done'? Princeton has sent 
them governors, statesmen, jurists, physicians, di- 
vines, able administrators in every walk of civil life. 
She has been the mother of their vigorous young 
Colleges. She has helped to maintain through all 
their borders a high and noble culture. Has she no 
claim on them in the hour of her need '? Is it not 
important to every great social and religious interest 
of the community, throughout this whole middle 
region of the United States, to maintain here a 
strong representative College, such as Princeton is '? 
Surely, it would be a burning shame and disgrace, 
to let a historic name like Princeton disappear, or 
even wax dim in the firmament. 

But I hope better things for this brave old College. 
We have all been delighted to see, within the last 
few months, the evidences of an orderly and resolute 
effort being made, to place our institution at last in 



28 

a position of permanent security. The appeal which 
has been made, has thus far been responded to 
promptly and nobly, and if the effort is only fol- 
lowed up persistently and wisely, there seems good 
reason to hope that before our next commencement 
the Trustees will be able to announce that Princeton 
has at length been placed in that position of honora- 
ble security to which she is entitled by her age and 
her historical associations. 

But to this end, fellow Ahimni, we must be willing 
to make some sacrifices. We must show, as the 
sons of other institutions have shown, " the mettle 
of our breeding." We must give our hundreds and 
our thousands. We must induce others to give. 
Among ail the praises that history has to bestow 
upon the benefactors of their race, there is no name 
purer, or higher, or more enduring, than that of 
founders of Colleges. No name in England, whether 
of king, lord, or commoner, can boast a continuance 
superior to that of some connected with the founda- 
tion of England's Colleges. But independently of 
the desire, so common to generous minds, to trans- 
mit one's name in some honorable way to future 
generations, considering the question in the light 
simply of pure benevolence, it is doubtful whether a 
man who has the means can bestow his liberality 
anywhere with a stronger guaranty of its being a 



29 

perennial source of blessing, than in the endowment 
of a College. What a beautiful and touching me- 
morial to all time, not only of grateful piety to God, 
but of sweet domestic affection, when a professorship 
is made to bear the name of some loved one de- 
parted ^. Like the box of precious ointment poured 
out upon the head of the Savior, such beautiful 
memorials of parental, filial, or conjugal affection 
shall be spoken of throughout the whole world, so 
long as the College itself shall stand, or the domestic 
virtues shall have a name or a place in the earth. 
Will no friend of Nassau Hall connect his name 
with the College by some such noble benefaction '? 
Is there not in the depths of some great heart, a 
sentiment or a thought that is aching for expression, 
— some chastened and holy sorrow, which can speak 
the fulness of its meaning only by some such prince- 
ly and beneficent memorial as this ] Is there no noble 
lady, anxious to leave behind her a fitting memento of 
the goodness of God to her in the days of her widow- 
hood'? Has not God left some large-hearted man 
childless for this very end, that he may here find an 
inheritor who will not dissipate his fairly earned gains, 
and who will bear his name in honorable remem- 
brance through the long coming generations to the 
end of time'? 

Fellow Alumni, ow duty in this matter is not to 



30 



be mistaken. This College is our College. Her 
good name is ours. Her Professors are ours. We 
may not, without dishonor to ourselves, allow her to 
remain longer before the public in her present con- 
dition. We cannot look our diplomas honestly in 
the face, without feeling that we owe something to 
Princeton. 

Brothers, let us resolve to do something liberal for 
the old homestead. liCt us do it heartily, generously, 
promptly, — remembering that five hundred or a 
thousand dollars now, is worth to the College double 
what the same would be at another time, and 
worth to the cause of scholarship and education 
five-fold what it would be, if given to any new and 
untried institution. I doubt not the feeling of every 
one of us is, rather let the College go down, rather 
let her be blotted out of existence entirely, than 
suifer her to drag out a feeble and sickly life as a 
third or fourth rate concern. The glorious past at 
least would be secure. It has always been our pride 
to think of our brave old College as being in the 
front rank of American Colleges, — as standing un- 
shamed among the first historic four. W^e recog- 
nize no lower place for her now. Aid Ccesar^ aid 
nullus. Let her stand there, or not stand at all. 
Let her stand there, not limp and shivering and cur- 
tailed of her fair proportions, but rich in honors and 



31 



ample in her endowments, and full of a healthy and 
vigorous life, renewing her youth like the eagle's, 
and pluming her wing for a yet higher and bolder 
flight through all the far-reaching future to the end 
of time. 



